


let down your hair

by JazzApples



Category: Hades (Video Game 2018)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Introspection, M/M, aka the pretentious hair fic, for both hades and the iliad, liberal application of artistic license, on another note hey achilles please adopt zagreus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-14
Updated: 2020-11-14
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:28:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27558367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JazzApples/pseuds/JazzApples
Summary: Achilles' hair ended abruptly, where once he had cut it cleanly with the blade of his spear.
Relationships: Achilles/Patroclus (Hades Video Game)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 208





	let down your hair

**Author's Note:**

> have you ever wondered if you could write a whole fic about hair? well apparently you can!

_But great Achilles stands apart in prayer/And from his head divides the yellow hair; Those curling locks which from his youth he vow'd/ And sacred grew, to Sperchius' honour'd flood: Then sighing, to the deep his locks he cast/And roll'd his eyes around the watery waste._

* * *

For Zagreus, there were many things about Achilles he took as fact; his skill with all weaponry, his kind smile masking inner melancholy and grief, a quiet personality that occasionally revealed its inner steel, the absence of fear of a man with nothing left to lose. There were enough shades that came through his Lord Father's halls for him to learn the ballads of the rage of Achilles, but the two images of him didn't fit over each other, didn't reconcile; and so Zagreus learned to let the discrepancies go, and focus on the Achilles he knew and respected. 

From the House Contractor, he bought a wall scroll of Achilles, careful to hide it lest he be embarassed. Hanging it on the walls of his room, Zagreus inspected the scene it depicted; Achilles standing in triumph before his men of the Greek army, spear raised and cloak billowing and long golden hair tumbling down his back. 

Zagreus frowned. The Achilles he knew had curly golden hair that fell to his shoulders, but he had learned better than to question the discrepancies and the sadness it brought to Achilles. Besides, it was just hair. Zagreus let it go. 

* * *

Over time, Patroclus talked more to Zagreus about his love Achilles, not just in half heard mutterings to the air before Zagreus approached. Everything wove a tapestry of the great Achilles in life; noble and valourous, prideful and wrathful, beautiful in a way that young greek men aspired to. His hair was long and golden, grown long in service of the river god Sperchius, only to be cut and sacrificed at the return of the son of Peleus to his homeland. 

Only he would never return, and no promise could be honoured. 

Zagreus looked upon Patroclus, and knew that there would be no more from him this day (or night), and quietly accepted his gifts and thanked him. Once more the discrepancies added up, but Zagreus could recognise a changed man when he saw one, and decided to let it go. Still though, the curiosity of the hair remained. 

* * *

Sometimes Zagreus would peer right down the halls of the House of Hades to the West Wing where Achilles stood guard. Sometimes he would watch Achilles run his hands through his hair, only to look surprised when his hand met empty air and no resistance earlier than anticipated. 

"Did you cut your hair not long before your death?" he asked of Achilles once. 

"Yes," Achilles replied, "as an act of my grief, and as an act of apology to a god. It burned on the funeral pyre of my love." 

Zagreus did not ask again. 

* * *

_Achilles grew his hair long, and it became but one of his features told in the tales of his deeds; Achilles the swift footed, the great, with his golden hair._

_Sometimes he grew frustrated with his hair in battle, and his Patroclus took to pinning it before every march out so it stayed neatly under his helm. Gradually it became yet another thing he depended on his love for, and Patroclus came up with more and more elaborate styles._

_Until one day, Patroclus was gone and there was no one left that Achilles would let tend to his hair. When he went into battle then on that grim morning, facing thousands of Trojans and maddened with grief, he wore his hair long and unadorned. Over the course of the battle it grew bloodied and matted with gore, and once this would have bothered him to no end, but he found this didn't matter to him anymore. Nothing did._

_Standing before Patroclus' funeral pyre, remembering the vow he could never again uphold, and his grief forever fresh, with his blade he sheared his golden hair, giving it to Patroclus' care forever more. Maybe Sperchius would be appeased. Maybe his love would be appeased. His hair was now nothing more than a hindrance._

* * *

In Elysium, Achilles lay dozing, golden head in the lap of his dear Patroclus. If he closed his eyes, he could pretend they were yet still in the fields of the Greek camp and Patroclus was weaving his hair into a new experimental style. There was, however, no mistaking the ethereal blue lights of Elysium. Patroclus, though, had not let the new, shorter length of his hair deter him from working with it, twisting it in clever ways into a pile of fine braids and crowning him in flowers.

"I'm sorry; there is not much you can do with my hair now." said Achilles. 

Patroclus gave a warm smile, and threaded in the last bloom. "I haven't let that stop me." 

Achilles sat up and leaned over to look upon his reflection in the River Lethe. He could almost imagine that he had been born and lived in times of peace. He touched his hair and smiled.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr: jazzapples3


End file.
